Muscular strength isn’t just important to athletes and bodybuilders; numerous health organizations recommend that adults include some resistance training in their weekly routines. Building muscular strength doesn’t have to mean lifting hundreds of pounds with barbells. Using a variety of easy-to-perform and familiar activities, you can improve and maintain your muscular strength.

Strength

Strength is your ability to exert force with your muscles at a given time. For example, lifting a heavy weight, moving a large object or otherwise using your muscles to perform one physical movement against resistance. Muscular strength is different from muscular endurance, which is your ability to use your muscles over time. Bodybuilders use the amount of weight they can lift or move one time before failure as a guide to gauging their maximum strength. To improve and maintain basic muscular strength for everyday life, perform 10 to 15 repetitions of different strength exercises using enough weight or resistance to challenge your muscles, doing these exercises at least twice a week.

Body-Weight Exercises

Using your body’s weight to perform resistance exercises is an effective way to build muscle. To maximize muscle building, perform pushups, pullups, chinups, dips and core exercises slowly. Raise and lower yourself using muscular effort each time, with a pause between each movement, rather than raising yourself and then letting yourself drop back down. If you aren’t looking to bodybuild, perform your reps at a faster speed and let yourself drop down. You’ll still build muscular strength, but won’t build as much size as if you perform slow reps.

Resistance Band Workouts

Resistance bands help you build muscle without expensive equipment or heavy weights. As you improve your strength, wrap the bands tighter to create more resistance, giving you more muscle-building benefit. In addition to upper-body exercises that work your arms, chest, back and shoulders, use resistance bands to build your lower body, performing familiar exercises such as deadlifts, squats and lunges.

Lifting Weights

Lifting heavy weights, such as barbells, dumbbells or a kettlebell, is the most obvious activity that promotes muscular strength. In addition to free weights, many bodybuilders use weight machines to help bulk up. For many people, a pair of dumbbells that weigh 5 to 10 pounds, or one 10- to 15-pound kettlebell, is all they need to build and maintain muscle mass. If you want to get bigger once you’ve built some muscle, increase the weight of your dumbbells or kettlebell. Weight machines also let you increase the weight or resistance settings as you build muscle, if more size is your goal.

Cardio Machine Routines

If your main goal is weight loss, but you want to add some muscle building to cardio workouts, increase the inclines or resistance settings on cardio machines such as treadmills, ellipticals, rowing machines, stair steppers or a stationary bike. Add dumbbell exercises to treadmill and exercise bike workouts.

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About the Author

Sam Ashe-Edmunds has been writing and lecturing for decades. He has worked in the corporate and nonprofit arenas as a C-Suite executive, serving on several nonprofit boards. He is an internationally traveled sport science writer and lecturer. He has been published in print publications such as Entrepreneur, Tennis, SI for Kids, Chicago Tribune, Sacramento Bee, and on websites such Smart-Healthy-Living.net, SmartyCents and Youthletic. Edmunds has a bachelor's degree in journalism.